Wetlands have been, throughout the centuries, even the millennia, the sacrificialscapegoat of the European landscape – a “landscapegoat”, as Giblett brilliantly namedit. Expelled from the horizons of western space, most wetland areas of Europe beganto know the fate of drainage since the late Middle Ages. Also in virtue of the moreeffective technologies available, the practice of land reclamation eventually witnessedits historical apex in the course of the 1900s, and to such extents that, by now,swamps and marshes have come to constitute true ecological rarities within theWestern European environment. The second part of the last century, however, alsohappened to attend a curious and rather radical veer in attitudes towards wetlands,whereby the latter ones, also in virtue of improved ecological understanding of theirvirtues and importance, got to be progressively revaluated, and to even be consideredamong the earth’s most fundamental ecosystems. Following such developments,concrete actions and plans to preserve the few remaining marshes, and even engagewith the restoration of those that had previously been deleted, have begun to spreadinternationally and rapidly grow in popularity.Italy can safely be seen as a paradigmatic example of similar events. The history,even starting with the Roman colonization, of land reclamation across the peninsula –and the Po Plain in particular – surely stands out as one of the richest and most intensewe have record of. Furthermore, land reclamation in Italy was ever associated withmore than just economical productivity. The country’s roots in Catholic monasticism,its role – since the renaissance and through the work of such figures as Galileo – as aprimary cradle and breeding ground for the modern science of hydraulics, and itsever-lasting agricultural vocation, have all contributed to load the local history ofdrainages and reclamations with additional symbolism, facets, and complexity. Notthe least, land reclamation revealed, for centuries, as perhaps one of the mostprominent means of political control and organization of the Italian territory. Thevsignificance of the Italian case has certainly not decreased with the eventual end, dueto saturation, of the practice of wetlands drainage. On the contrary, at least in someways, the country has – in the two last decades – newly proposed itself at the forefrontof water management and governance. In this sense, then, we can conclude that, asmuch as wetlands – in virtue of their shifting significations and role for humancommunities – constitute an ideal and most profound subject for the study of humanenvironmentalrelations, Italy represents an optimal and most appropriate site for thestudy of wetlands throughout history.Based on Italy itself – and, more precisely, the already-mentioned Po Plain – thegenesis of the work here presented has been twofold. On the one hand, it wasconceived as a thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for a Degree of Master of Artsin Anthropology. On the other one, it was explicitly thought from the outset as acontribution to Prof. Gísli Pálsson’s own comparative research on Icelandic wetlands.In virtue of this latter aspect, the study was undertaken as to come to represent ageneral and yet informative introductory outlook on the complex and multilayeredcultural history of Italian wetlands – from the reclamations of the past, until thedevelopments of the present. The idea of being somehow part of a wider context, andthe mission to provide a broad and sufficiently exhaustive insight into a subjectwhich, on the contrary, revealed itself as being overwhelmingly elusive and vast,informed this work structurally, from its very inception. We are aware that, for thatsake and purpose, not little had to be sacrificed in terms of local perspectives andspecificity. We hope, nonetheless, to have sufficiently counterbalanced that loss, bygaining at least as much on other sides of the inquiry.